LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  Of  CAUFQRHII 

RlYERSfOE 


THE  GREATER  WAR 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 
THE  MENACE  OF  PEACE  $1.00 

WOODROW     WILSON     AND    THE 

WORLD'S  PEACE  1.50 

GERMANISM  AND  THE  AMERICAN 

CRUSADE  .50 


THE  GREATER  WAR 


BY 

GEORGE   D.   HERRON 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL   KENNERLEY 
1919 


COPYRIGHT    1919   BY 
MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 


n  I 


PRINTED  IN  AMERICA 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    THE  PROPOSED  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS  1 

II    GERMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM — AND  THE  FORCE  BEHIND 

THEM  19 

III    WHICH  SHALL   REMAKE  THE  PEACE— GERMANY   OR 

DEMOCRACY  ?  41 

IV    THE  JUDGMENT  DAY  OF  DEMOCRACY  65 


THE  PROPOSED  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS 


THE    PROPOSED 
LEAGUE    OF   NATIONS 


IT  is  our  duty  to  accept  the  League  of  Nations 
handed  to  us  by  the  Paris  Conference,  despite 
its  almost  brazen  defects,  and  to  make  of  it  a  point 
of  departure  toward  that  world-society,  that  real 
brotherhood  of  nations,  which  dwells  in  the 
expectation,  in  the  determination  indeed,  of  the 
peoples  now  duped  and  despairing1.  I  do  not 
suppose  the  present  League  is  what  the  President 
desired;  but,  against  doubtless  overwhelming 
odds,  against  a  diplomatic  skepticism  well-nigh 
universal,  he  has  held  fast  to  his  primal  purpose, 
and  has  taken  what  accomplishment  he  could  get. 
It  is  something  that  the  Great  Idea  is  in  the  world, 
that  it  has  forced  the  consent  of  governments, 
even  though  it  be  but  badly  formed,  as  yet,  and 
scantily  clothed. 

3 


4  THE   GBEATES   WAS 

That  it  is  badly  formed,  that  it  is  much  more 
shadowy  than  substantial,  is  the  truth.  We  shall 
get  nowhere  with  our  hopes  for  a  federate  world 
by  blinking  the  truth,  by  evading  the  facts.  If  the 
present  League  of  Nations  were  a  finality,  if  we 
were  to  take  it  as  more  than  a  point  of  departure, 
then  we  should  doom  ourselves  and  the  expectant 
peoples  to  perilous  disappointment.  But  those  of 
us  who  have  hoped  so  much  during  these  terri- 
ble years,  who  have  almost  exhausted  our  souls  as 
well  as  our  bodies  in  labors  that  predicated  the 
end  of  the  war  as  an  approach  to  the  kingdom  of 
heaven — we  can  only  frankly  face  the  failure  of 
our  labors,  we  can  only  acknowledge  the  defer- 
ment of  our  hopes,  and  seize  upon  the  shadow  that 
has  been  offered  us  with  the  consecration  of  our- 
selves to  the  work  of  creating  substance  within 
the  shadow. 


n 


League  of  Nations  presented  by  the  Peace 
Conference  is  a  name  and  no  more :  no  such 
thing  as  a  League  of  Nations  exists :  no  such  thing 
has  been  created  at  Paris.  The  most  we  can 
say  is,  that  a  doubtful  League  of  Governments 
has  been  put  forth  j  and,  practically,  a  League 
of  only  three  governments  at  that.  As  it  turns 
out,  what  has  been  accomplished  at  Paris  is  a 
new  Triple  Alliance  masquerading  as  a  general 
League.  And  this  new  Triple  Alliance,  if  a  real 
Society  of  Nations  be  not  soon  created,  will 
become  an  intolerable  nuisance,  a  tyranny  not 
to  be  borne.  Moreover,  it  will  inevitably1  pro- 
voke an  ultimate  Teutonic  Alliance  of  all  Europe 
east  of  the  Ehine  and  south  of  the  Alps.  If 
the  present  industrial  and  commercial  order 
remains,  if  capitalist  production  and  distribu- 
tion endures,  if  the  existing  occult  govern- 
ment of  the  world  by  the  mobilized  Ancient 
Appetites  continues,  then  the  Peace  of  Paris 

5 


O  THE   GBEATEE   WAB 

and  its  fabled  League  are  but  a  preparation 
for  a  new  and  later  Armageddon,  in  which  two 
great  opposing  groups  shall  settle  between  them- 
selves the  ownership  of  the  world. 

That  which  alone  can  prevent  this  future 
Armageddon  is  an  early  and  international  awak- 
ening of  the  democratic  peoples,  and  the  organiza- 
tion of  our  industrial  activities  and  political  insti- 
tutions, of  the  totality  of  our  human  life  indeed, 
upon  the  basis  of  an  actual  democracy. 

The  democratization  of  the  world,  or  at  least 
of  our  western  civilisation,  beginning  with  the 
creation  of  a  real  Society  of  Nations  to  supplant 
the  present  so-called  League — this  alone  can  turn 
back  or  dissolve  the  Bolshevist  flood;  this  alone 
can  present  a  universal  reaction  to  autocracy, 
when  the  deeps  of  the  flood  have  passed  over 
mankind. 


Ill 

IT  is  the  fatality  of  the  so-called  League  of 
Nations  that  it  comes  forth  without  one  syllable 
concerning  the  only  basis  upon  which  an  actual 
League  can  be  founded.  Indeed,  the  League  con- 
stituted at  Paris  is  without  any  foundation  what- 
soever. Its  would-be  founders  were  so  fearful  of 
facing  reality,  they  were  so  dominated  by  the 
mind  of  international  capital,  that  they  did  not 
even  dare  mention  the  foundation  in  their  dis- 
cussion. 

The  only  foundation  upon  which  a  League  of 
Nations  can  be  built  is  this : — absolute  free  trade 
and  intercourse  between  the  nations  that  are  its 
members.  The  abolition  of  economic  frontiers, 
the  freedom  of  movement  among  people,  the 
liberty  to  exchange  products  and  opinions, — this 
is  the  sole  basis  of  any  real  human  society, 
whether  it  be  within  a  single  nation  or  between  all 
nations.  There  can  be  no  communion  of  peoples 
not  based  upon  a  communion  of  work,  a  com- 

7 


8  THE   CREATES   WAB 

mtmion  of  the  things  which  the  respective  peoples 
produce. 

Trade  or  exchange  is  not  a  mere  material  but 
a  spiritual  operation — and  the  spiritual  and  the 
material  are  inseparable.  The  separation  of  the 
spirit  of  man  from  the  work  of  man  is  the  evil 
imagination  of  a  false  religion  and  a  false  politic. 
Life  is  one,  and  may  not  be  divided,  in  thought 
or  in  action,  except  to  our  destruction.  The 
division  of  life  into  compartments  is  the  devil  at 
work — the  devil  administrating  human  society. 

Humanity  is  therefore  one  economic  organism, 
a  single  social  unity.  We  are  all  bound  up 
together  in  one  common  interest,  in  one  common 
destiny,  whether  we  will  or  no.  No  nation  really 
prospers  at  the  cost  of  another  nation,  no  man 
finally  gains  by  the  loss  of  another  man.  There  is 
no  separate  security  for  the  nation,  for  the  indi- 
vidual— no  security  for  one  except  in  the  security 
of  all.  The  bread  of  no  man  is  secure,  the  free- 
dom of  no  man  is  secure,  the  prosperity  of  no  man 
or  nation  is  secure,  until  the  bread,  the  freedom, 
the  prosperity  of  all  men  and  all  nations  is  secure. 
As  long  as  one  smallest  tribe,  as  long  as  the  hum- 


PBOPOSED  LEAGUE  OP  NATIONS  9 

blest  individual,  is  denied  complete  freedom  of 
spiritual  and  political  intercourse,  complete  free- 
dom of  trade  with  all  tribes,  with  all  individuals, 
just  so  long  is  society  diseased  and  dishonest,  and 
the  whole  world  endangered.  Disunion  of  inter- 
est between  nation  and  nation,  between  man  and 
man,  is  nothing  else  than  the  destruction  of  the 
nations  and  the  men  thus  divided.  The  erection 
of  economic  barriers  is  in  reality  a  blasphemy 
against  the  Spirit  of  God,  a  profanation  of  the 
mankind  that  professes  to  come  from  the  hand  of 
God 

Hence  the  League  formed  at  Paris,  ignoring  as 
it  does  the  basal  fact  of  our  collective  existence, 
has  no  foundation  whatsoever  upon  which  to 
hmld.  And  the  first  work  of  those  who  would 
have  a  League  of  Nations  that  is  a  reality,  or 
rather  a  World-Society  instead  of  a  League  of 
Tribes,  is  to  lay  a  foundation  of  economic  free- 
dom and  reciprocity  whereupon  the  society  can 
build.  Upon  this  foundation  and  no  other  can  the 
building  rise  and  endure. 


IV 

'T'HE  next  change  that  must  be  made  in  the 
present  League  of  Nations,  in  order  to  make 
it  a  reality,  is  to  democratize  its  constitution.  In 
its  present  form,  it  is  not  a  League  of  Nations, 
but  a  League  of  Governments,  and  a  League  of 
thoroughly  capitalized  governments  at  that.  The 
nations  or  peoples  have  as  little  to  do  with  the 
League,  as  it  is  now  constituted,  as  Christianity 
has  to  do  with  Christ  or  the  Peace  of  Paris  with 
the  famous  Fourteen  Principles.  The  constitu- 
tion must  be  so  changed  that  the  peoples  shall 
directly  elect  their  own  representatives  in  the 
League.  It  is  no  profit  to  the  peoples  that  diplo- 
matic appointees  of  divers  governments, — and 
governments  financially  controlled  at  that, — shall 
sit  in  solemn  session  over  the  world's  arrange- 
ments. Such  a  League  can  only  be,  so  far  as 
the  peoples  thus  disposed  of  are  concerned,  a 
heartbreaking  mockery  as  well  as  hideous  des- 
potism. 

10 


PEOPOSED  LEAGUE   OF   NATIONS  11 

A  real  League  of  Nations  will  correspond  with 
its  name;  that  is,  it  will  be  a  League  of  the 
peoples,  of  their  chosen  representatives,  and  not 
a  close  corporation  of  self-appointed  members — 
not  a  corporation  imposed,  as  the  proposed 
League  is  imposed,  upon  the  peoples  by  govern- 
ments administered  in  the  interests  of  the  inter- 
national money-lenders. 


IN  the  next  place,  in  a  real  Society  of  Nations 
there  will  be  equality  of  representation  and 
power  between  the  peoples.  The  League  formed 
at  Paris  is  brazenly  materialistic  in  its  concep- 
tion of  the  proportioning  of  power.  It  is  based 
upon  the  superstition  that  mere  size  is  supremely 
important :  quality  is  relatively  of  no  importance. 
Power,  in  the  present  League,  is  proportioned 
according  to  terrestrial  bigness,  according  to  the 
areas  of  the  earth  each  government  controls. 
The  small  nations  are  insolently  treated  as  incon- 
sequential. 

Until  the  constitution  of  the  League  of  Nations 
is  cured  of  this  besotted  materialism  of  concep- 
tion, until  it  is  cleansed  of  the  devil's  notion  that 
mere  size  constitutes  value,  until  it  provides  for 
an  actual  equality  of  voice  and  opportunity 
between  the  nations,  without  regard  to  size  or 
material  power, — until  then  it  is  no  League  of 
Nations,  but  a  mere  diplomatic  masquerade  of 
capitalist  governments. 

12 


VI 

A  GAIN,  the  rejection  of  the  principle, — pro- 
^^  posed  and  urged  by  Japan, — of  the  equality 
of  races,  so  far  as  public  law  and  diplomatic 
procedure  count,  was  a  flagrant  sin  and  fatal 
blunder.  Not  only  was  the  rejection  a  sin 
against  the  Holy  Ghost :  not  only  was  it  faithless 
and  cowardly:  it  has  sown  the  seed  of  a  sinister 
and  ominous  unfaith  in  three-quarters  of  the 
earth's  population.  It  has  established  in  the 
minds  of  the  black,  the  brown,  and  the  yellow 
peoples  the  conviction  that  the  white  man's  moral 
professions,  his  proclamations  of  public  law  and 
justice,  the  benevolence  of  his  administration  of 
the  lands  of  other  races,  are  all  a  lie.  Particu- 
larly, do  these  now  think  of  the  Anglo-Saxon — 
the  American  and  the  Briton — as  the  most  ob- 
vious hypocrite  of  history.  "For  some  years," 
said  a  Japanese  diplomat  to  me,  "we  in  Japan 
believed  that  justice  and  righteousness  really 
existed  in  Christian  and  Western  civilization. 
But,  of  late  years,  we  know  this  is  not  so.  The 

13 


14  THE   GREATER   WAR 

professions  and  doctrines  of  the  Christian  nations 
are  only  pretentions  masks  for  greed  and  injus- 
tice. We  now  know  that  no  such  thing  as  inter- 
national righteousness  exists,  and  that  Western 
capitalist  might  can  be  limited  only  by  greater 
might.  Japan  has  learned  this,  and  all  Asia  is 
learning  it.  And  this  explains  our  course  in 
China:  we  know  that  we  can  depend  upon  no 
justice,  no  fair-dealing,  on  the  part  of  the  Western 
powers.  They  will  divide  and  exploit  China,  and 
thence  reduce  Japan  to  vassalage,  without  con- 
science or  consideration  or  delay,  if  we  of  Japan 
do  not  dominate  and  develop  China-  ourselves; 
and,  in  the  end,  the  Western  exploitation  of  China 
will  be  China's  final  ruin,  while  ours  will  be 
China's  final  salvation.  In  China,  in  the  Pacific, 
we  must  be  full-armed  and  sufficient  to  defend 
ourselves.  To  depend  on  an  Anglo-Saxon-made 
League  of  Nations,  to  depend  on  any  righteous- 
ness latent  or  regnant  in  Christian  or  Western 
civilization,  would  be  to  prove  ourselves  imbecile 
— prove  ourselves  deserving  of  the  national  un- 
doing that  would  certainly  come  upon  us  from 
Christian  hands." 


PROPOSED  LEAGUE  OF  NATIONS         15 

Thus  speaks  Japan,  the  strongest  of  the 
Oriental  peoples.  But  the  rejection  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  the  equality  of  races  by  the  Paris  Confer- 
ence has  also  had  its  effect  upon  the  Afghan  and 
the  Hindoo,  upon  the  Arab  and  the  fellah.  The 
infamous  news  is  by  this  time  the  gossip  of  the 
Congo;  is  abroad  through  the  whole  Dark  Conti- 
nent; is  troubling  the  breast  of  the  American 
negro — already  cast  out  from  the  protection  of 
law ;  is  traversing  the  pastures  of  the  wild  Kurds, 
the  towns  of  kindly  Bokhara,  the  tents  of  Araby 
Felix.  Beyond  all  our  understanding  and  imagi- 
nation, this  rejection  by  the  makers  of  the  Cove- 
nant of  the  League  of  Nations  has  stamped  the 
white  man,  in  the  minds  of  three-quarters  of  the 
peoples  of  this  planet,  as  an  unconscionable  liar 
and  looter.  He  is,  in  their  minds,  the  man  who, 
masking  his  predatory  purposes  in  his  Christian 
creed  and  professions  of  free  and  equal  justice, 
niches  from  the  weaker  peoples  their  lands  and 
natural  resources. 

The  yellow  and  brown  races,  as  well  as  the 
black,  have  long  suspected  this  master-hypocrisy 
of  the  white  man:  now  they  know  it — they  know 


16  THE  GREATER  WAS 

it  once  and  for  all.    And  they  are  biding  their 
time — Asia  and  Africa  are  biding  their  time. 

Yes,  this  that  seemed  a  mere  item  to  the  ' '  Great 
Four",  will  prove,  if  their  repentance  be  not  writ 
in  the  Covenant  soon,  one  of  the  most  calamitous 
sins  of  history — a  shame,  a  spiritual  fatuity, 
pregnant  with  the  White  Man's  doom.  Until  the 
rejected  principle  is  inscribed  indelibly  in  the 
Covenant  of  the  League,  the  Covenant  is  charged 
with  a  sin  against  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  the  League 
advances  to  despotism  and  death. 


vn 

DUT  to  bring  my  criticisms  to  a  close,  and  to 
end  where  I  began,  I  repeat  that  we  must 
accept  and  seize  upon  the  League  of  Nations  that 
has  been  offered  us.  But  we  must  face  the  truth 
about  it,  recognize  it  for  what  it  is,  and  instantly 
proceed  to  reconstitute  it  so  that  it  shall  become 
indeed  a  Society  of  Nations,  a  communion  of  free 
and  equal  and  fraternal  peoples.  If  we  hide  from 
the  truth,  if  we  continue  to  juggle  and  com- 
promise as  the  incredible  peacemakers  of  Paris 
have  done,  we  need  expect  nothing  but  a  genera- 
tion and  perhaps  a  century  of  disintegration  and 
desperate  darkness  for  all  mankind. 

Yet  even  now,  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  eleventh 
hour  of  this  most  stupendous  opportunity  of 
history,  we  may  yet  act  with  such  swiftness  and 
honesty  and  courage  as  to  restore  faith  to  the 
peoples,  and  make  this  awful  human  tragedy 
through  which  we  have  passed  a  veritable  door 
through  which  the  kingdom  of  heaven  shall 
shortly  descend  around  the  earth. 

17 


GERMANISM  AND   BOLSHEVISM— AND 
THE  FORCE  BEHIND  THEM 


GERMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM 

AND 

THE    FORCE     BEHIND     THEM 


is  not  a  Bolshevist  in  Germany," 
said  my  friend,  as  we  sat  secluded  and 
brooding  in  the  coffee-room  of  the  inn. 

I  named  Liebknecht  and  Eosa  Luxemburg. 
"They  were  savagely  slain  and  shamelessly  de- 
famed," I  avowed.  "But  were  they  not  Bolshev- 
ist, in  the  end!" 

"Liebknecht  was  not  Bolshevist,"  he  replied; 
"nor  was  Rosa  Luxemburg.  They  were  mad,  if 
you  like.  But  their  madness  was  akin  to  that  of 
the  early  Christian  martyrs:  it  was  the  madness 
of  an  outraged  faith.  They  had  labored  and 
suffered,  through  many  tempestuous  but  hopeful 
years,  for  a  co-operative  and  truly  democratic 
society:  they  were  socialist  in  fact  as  well  as  in 

21 


22  THE   CREATES   WAE 

name.  And,  behold !  they  stood  face  to  face  with 
a  people  betrayed  and  debauched  by  the  official 
leaders  of  the  socialist  hope,  the  socialist  party. 
It  was  their  cheated  cause,  their  cheated  Germany, 
and  the  cheated  world,  that  made  them  mad;  it 
was  an  Apocalyptic  rage  that  possessed  them; 
but  they  had  nothing  in  common  with  Eussian 
Bolshevism. " 

"German  Bolshevism  is  a  phantom,"  he  con- 
tinued, ' '  a  phantom  conjured  forth  by  the  Junkers 
and  financial  magnates  for  the  deception  and  the 
coercion  of  the  Allies,  and  for  the  destruction  of 
the  elements  of  democracy/' 


n 

TV /IY  friend  is  German:  but  he  is  an  upstanding 
***•  man,  with  a  clear  integrity  of  soul  and  a 
singular  power  of  discernment.  He  served  many 
years  in  the  German  Foreign  Office,  renouncing 
high  position  and  further  promotion  when  Ger- 
many sprang  full-armed  upon  the  relatively  un- 
armed nations.  He  was  then,  as  he  still  is,  a 
patriot  of  the  noblest  type,  keeping  sleepless 
watch  upon  his  country,  working  without  rest 
for  the  changing  of  Germany  into  an  efficient 
world-servant  and  social  savior. 

He  agreed  with  me  that  Germany  was  disinte- 
grating ;  that  the  total  social  structure  was  falling 
in  upon  itself.  But  not  through  Bolshevism;  nor 
are  the  disintegrating  forces,  the  revolutionary 
uprisings,  the  Sparticist  riots,  however  widely 
and  wildly  they  range,  moving  toward  a  Bol- 
shevist reintegration.  And  they  who  cry  the 
approach  of  a  Bolshevist  Germany  are  steeped 
in  the  ignorance  wherewith  the  German  poli- 

23 


24  THE   GREATER   WAR 

ticians  have  encircled  them.  Or  they  are  mercen- 
aries of  the  Ancient  Appetites,  now  internation- 
ally mobilized,  now  occultly  omnipresent,  and  the 
Peace  Conference  unwittingly  in  their  hands. 

Of  course  Germany  is  full  of  revolution — there 
need  be  no  doubt  about  that.  But,  in  order  to 
understand  this,  we  must  think  of  revolution  in 
the  future  tense.  There  has  been  no  German 
revolution  up  till  now.  There  has  been  no  change 
in  the  German  state  of  mind;  nor  in  its  politics; 
nor  its  purpose  to  recast  the  world  in  the  German 
mould.  The  fabled  revolution  that  formed  the 
still  more  fabulous  German  republic  is  utterly  a 
lie;  nor  doth  history  present  an  imposture  more 
malignant  or  menacing  to  mankind.  The  republic 
whereof  Ebert  and  Scheidemann  are  the  chiefs 
is  nothing  but  the  militarist  regime  masquerading. 
Behind  this  republic,  and  shaping  it  to  their  own 
ends,  are  the  industrial  magnates  and  the  Junkers. 
Dissembling  the  socialist  state,  the  German  re- 
public is  but  a  thin  disguise,  a  new  dress,  for 
the  old  pan-Germanism  which,  full  of  all  political 
uncleanness  and  reeking  with  universal  intrigue, 
has  not  taken  its  first  moral  bath. 


GERMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM  25 

The  German  government  of  today  is  no  more 
revolutionary,  no  more  socialistic,  no  more  demo- 
cratic, than  Ludendorf  and  the  Kaiser  are  social- 
istic and  democratic.  It  is  merely  the  nucleus  of 
that  return  of  autocracy  for  which  the  mobilized 
Appetites  are  planning — first  in  Germany,  and 
thence  through  the  world. 

It  is  wholly  a  military  government  also — a 
government  of  the  officers  who,  slinking  from 
pnblic  view  at  the  time  of  the  signing  of  the  armis- 
tice, are  now  strutting  the  streets  of  Berlin  and 
giving  the  orders  which  Weimar  implicitly  obeys, 
and  wherewith  Weimar  makes  havoc  with  the 
Conference  at  Paris. 


HI 


DUT  there  are  the  elements  of  real  revolution  in 
Germany — the  seed  and  the  divine  ferment  of 
a  fundamental  democracy  are  there.  If  this  real 
revolution  be  not  arrested  and  thwarted,  if  the 
democratic  seed  be  permitted  its  springtime  and 
harvest,  then  the  autocratic  order,  and  the  mind 
that  makes  it,  will  be  altogether  overthrown :  and 
Germany  may  become  the  pioneer  of  a  democracy, 
political  and  social  and  economic,  that  shall  be 
even  as  a  new  birth  of  the  primitive  Christian 
ideal  and  community.  All  the  inner  disintegra- 
tion of  Germany,  calamitous  and  incalculable  as 
it  seems,  is  withal  pregnant  with  this  stupendous 
possibility. 

And  it  is  in  order  to  prevent  this  democratic 
revolution  that  the  spectre  of  German  Bolshevism 
has  been  so  threateningly  thrust  forth  by  the  pan- 
German  Junkers  and  industrial  magnates.  Every 
movement  toward  a  really  changed  Germany  will 
henceforth  be  branded  as  Bolshevist — will  be  so 

26 


GEBMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM  27 

pictured  as  to  terrify  America  and  the  associated 
nations  into  aiding  the  destruction  of  both  Ger- 
man and  European  democracy;  into  supporting, 
under  the  illusion  that  they  are  saving  Germany 
from  Bolshevism,  a  Prussian  state  socialism 
which  is  nothing  else  than  a  militarist  autocracy. 
Germany  is  deliberately  and  boldly  preparing 
just  such  a  trap — a  trap,  planetary  in  its  scope 
and  infernal  in  its  effects  upon  political  humanity, 
whereunto  the  Allied  peace-makers,  their  feet  full 
of  confusion,  have  day  by  day  been  stumbling. 
And  if  once  the  trap  closes  upon  them,  if  once  the 
Allies  follow  the  strong  delusion  that  makes  them 
the  destroyers  of  German  democracy,  then  the 
future  Prussian  re-organization  of  Europe  and 
Western  Asia,  from  the  port  of  Calais  to  the 
gates  of  India,  is  assured;  then  out  of  the 
whelming  general  chaos  already  on  its  way,  and 
whether  its  years  be  two  or  five  or  twenty,  the 
German  Iron  Age  will  emerge ;  and  Germany  will 
have  won  the  war  and  have  conquered  the  Conti- 
nent of  Europe,  with  West  Asia  and  .Africa  at  her 
feet. 


IV 

•"PHIS  new  German  menace  is  no  distempered 
*  watchman's  dream.  The  German  prepara- 
tion for  the  war,  not  believed  in  nor  heeded  nntil 
the  barbarous  hordes  sprang  upon  the  astonished 
and  unprepared  nations,  expecting  to  paralyse 
and  subdue  them  by  such  quick  murder,  such  theft 
and  rapine,  as  history  has  never  known — this 
German  military  assault  now  shrinks  into  the 
incidental  before  the  immeasurably  vaster  Ger- 
man menace  which  will  soon  be  loosed,  for  God 
knows  how  long,  upon  an  again  unexpectant  and 
unready  world. 

For,  notwithstanding  the  seeming  severity  of 
the  terms  imposed  by  the  Conference,  Germany 
counts  that  she  has  not  lost  the  war — eventually. 
Nor  has  she — as  we  shall  in  due  time  see. 

Nor  now  does  it  matter  whether,  precipitated 
into  final  panic  by  the  pressure  of  the  bestirred 
peoples,  the  Conference  renders  terms  to  Ger- 
many that  shall  be  vindictive  and  destructive,  or 

28 


GEBMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM  29 

whether  the  terms  be  so  moderated  as  to  be 
acceptable  to  the  government  at  Weimar:  in 
either  case,  the  Germany  that  made  the  war  has 
potentially  won  it. 

If — as  is  improbable — she  refuses  to  sign,  she 
will  call  the  German  peoples  to  the  defence  of  the 
fatherland;  and  the  call  will  be  heeded,  even 
though  a  period  of  national  disintegration  inter- 
vene ;  or,  if  she  sign  the  terms,  she  will  not  keep 
them;  nor  will  any  intention  of  keeping  them  be 
implicit  in  her  signature.  And  while  she  is 
gaining  time  by  her  pretended  acquiescence,  the 
government  of  Ebert  and  Scheidemann  may  be 
able  to  effect  the  destruction  of  the  German 
democracy  represented  by  such  men  as  Dr. 
Muehlon  and  Professor  Foerster,  and  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  a  State  Socialist  autocracy;  which 
autocracy,  enleagued  with  a  Germanized  Bolshev- 
ist Russia,  may  extend  its  dominion  throughout 
Europe  and  Western  Asia. 


DUT  during  the  war,  also,  and  watchful  and 
formative  of  every  ebb  and  flow  of  victory 
between  the  Allies  and  the  Central  Powers, 
certain  international  forces,  so  materially  and 
psychically  powerful  as  to  be  almost  almighty, 
worked  sleeplessly  to  shape  the  war's  end  to 
Germany's  advantage.  Since  the  signing  of  the 
armistice,  these  same  forces,  working  by  ways 
occult  but  no  less  pervasive  and  effectual,  have 
pervaded  the  Peace  Conference. 

The  armistice  was,  so  far  as  America  and  the 
associated  nations  are  concerned,  a  blunder  which 
our  generation  may  not  repair.  Nor  have  I 
spoken  with  a  single  authentic  German — espe- 
cially among  those  who  had  hoped  that  the  war 
would  result  in  the  birth  of  a  German  democracy 
— who  does'  not  frankly  and  sorrowfully  agree 
with  this  opinion.  Doubtless  were  saved,  for  the 
moment,  many  thousands  of  lives — of  lives  very 
precious  too — that  the  finishing  of  the  war  and 

30 


GEBMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM  31 

the  actual  defeat  of  Germany  would  have  required. 
But,  in  one  manner  and  another,  unnumbered 
millions  of  lives,  and  years  of  unimaginable  hu- 
man suffering  and  confusion,  may  be  the  price 
of  the  comparatively  few  lives  that  were  saved 
by  the  halt  of  the  associated  armies  upon  the 
threshold  of  victory. 

The  moment  America  and  the  associated 
nations  consented  to  the  armistice,  that  moment 
the  vantage-ground  for  the  negotiations  of  peace 
was  occupied  by  Germany.  At  that  moment, 
Germany  was  left  in  a  position  to  effect  an 
eventual  recovery  of  what  she  had  lost  by  the  war, 
and  to  plan  for  mighty  additions  to  that  recovery. 
Her  armies  would  claim  that  they  had  never  been 
defeated.  The  fatherland,  in  which  was  heaped 
or  hid  the  loot  of  territories  reaching  from  the 
walls  of  Paris  to  the  lands  beyond  the  Caucasus, 
had  not  been  invaded.  German  spies  and  agents, 
schooled  and  skilled  in  a  devilry  still  unintelligible 
to  Anglo-Saxons,  were  and  still  are  employed  in 
every  nation's  diplomatic  and  consular  service, 
in  every  religion's  missions  and  ministries. 

And  these  are  now  engaged  in  secretly  directing 


32  THE   GREATEE  WAR 

and  shaping  the  general  revolutionary  movement. 
They  are  foully  infecting  each  nation's  efforts 
towards  social  reconstruction,  everywhere  poison- 
ing the  purposes  and  perverting  the  organisations 
of  labor.  Just  as  they  wrought  the  ruin  of  Russia, 
just  as  they  wrought  the  treason  and  disgrace  of 
international  socialism,  so  they  are  now  engaged 
in  the  destruction  of  such  meagre  moral  founda- 
tions as  remain  underneath  European  or  Western 
civilisation;  and  they  are  also  preparing  an  en- 
veloping chaos  for  the  Asian  and  African  con- 
tinents. Germany  expects  that,  once  the  dissolu- 
tion of  the  world  is  accomplished,  she  will  reshape 
it  according  to  her  evil  heart's  desire. 


VI 


f  HAVE  said  that  certain  great  forces  have 
steadily  and  occultly  worked  for  a  German 
peace.  Bnt  I  mean,  in  fact,  one  force — an  inter- 
national finance  to  which  all  other  forces  hostile 
to  the  freedom  of  nations  and  of  the  individual 
soul  are  contributory.  The  influence  of  this 
finance  has  permeated  the  Conference,  delaying 
its  decisions,  increasing  division  between  people 
and  people,  between  class  and  class,  between 
peace-makers  and  peace-makers,  in  order  to 
achieve  two  definite  ends ;  which  two  ends  are  one 
and  the  same. 

The  first  end  is  so  to  manipulate  the  minds  of 
the  peace-makers,  of  their  hordes  of  retainers  and 
"experts,"  as  to  bring  about,  if  possible,  a  peace 
that  will  not  be  destructive  to  industrial  Germany. 
The  second  end  is  so  to  delay  the  Russian  ques- 
tion, so  to  complicate  and  thwart  every  proposed 
solution,  that,  at  last,  either  during  or  after  the 

33 


34  THE   GREATER   WAR 

Peace  Conference,  a  recognition  of  the  Bolshevik 
power  as  the  de  facto  government  of  Russia  may 
seem  the  only  possible  solution. 


vn 

DUT  why,  it  will  be  asked,  should  an  inter- 
national finance  desire  a  peace  favorable  to 
Germany?  And  why,  above  all,  should  this 
finance  assist  a  Bolshevist  Russia?  I  will  answer 
the  two  questions  in  their  order. 

First:  Germany's  recovery  means  autocracy; 
and  the  concessionnaires  have  always  been  on 
the  side  of  autocratic  government.  The  desired 
autocracy  might  be  managed,  it  is  true,  by  forms 
apparently  republican.  But  downright  autocracy 
is  the  international  concessionnaire 's  preferable 
and  most  nurturing  element. 

Now  the  whole  mentality  of  the  German  gov- 
erning class,  and  the  whole  mind  of  the  Ger- 
man people  as  well,  is  moulded  by  and  for  the 
autocratic  mood  and  method.  There  is  no  demo- 
cratic past  in  Germany,  either  in  experience  or 
aspiration;  nor,  prior  to  the  war,  was  there  any 
seed  or  promise  of  democracy.  Nor  is  there  any 
essential  diiference  between  the  government  of 

35 


36  THE   GREATER   WAR 

the  Kaiser  and  the  Junkers  and  that  of  the  fabled 
German  Social  Democracy.  The  Marxian  is  just 
as  autocratic  as  the  Junker,  and  believes  just  as 
little  in  democracy.  The  program  of  German 
socialism  is,  as  certainly  as  the  divine  right  to 
rule  which  the  Kaiser  proclaimed,  based  upon 
sheer  might.  Both  official  and  theoretical  German 
socialism  is  just  as  much  the  enemy  of  democracy, 
just  as  much  the  enemy  of  essential  socialism, 
just  as  much  the  enemy  of  an  actual  social  free- 
dom, just  as  much  the  enemy  of  the  right  of  the 
human  soul  to  fulfill  itself,  as  the  Kaiser  and  the 
Junker. 

Had  the  Marxians  prevailed  in  Prussia,  before 
the  war,  the  nature  or  substance  of  the  state 
would  have  undergone  little  change;  and  what 
change  it  would  have  undergone  would  have  been 
freedom's  decrease  and  not  its  increase.  A  col- 
lectivist  autocracy  would  have  been  established 
in  place  of  the  autocracy  of  the  Junkers  and  the 
dynasty;  and  the  German  peoples  would  have 
obeyed  the  Marxian  autocracy  and  its  iron  rule 
with  the  same  docility  wherewith  they  had  obeyed 
the  rule  of  the  Prussian. 


GEBMANISM  AND  BOLSHEVISM  37 

And  the  social  democracy  of  Germany,  had  it 
come  into  power,  would  have  been  nothing  more 
or  less  than  a  supremely  capitalist  state.  Thus 
the  Kaiser  and  the  industrial  magnates  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  the  fabled  social  democrat. 
And  thus  the  international  finance  whereof  I 
speak  has  everything  to  gain  and  nothing  to  lose 
by  the  support  which  it  renders  to  the  socialist 
republic  of  Ebert  and  Scheidemann.  Further- 
more, there  is  an  expectation,  not  only  among 
financiers,  but  among  all  reactionary  forces,  that 
the  chaos  fast  coming  upon  Europe  will  dissolve 
even  the  semblance  of  democratic  institutions, 
and  all  democratic  hopes  as  well;  and  that  Ger- 
many— the  old  regime  riding  into  power  upon  the 
reactionary  tide — will  gather  all  Europe  under 
her  protecting  wings.  It  is  hoped  that  the  several 
peoples,  despairing  of  order  elsewhere  and  else- 
wise,  will  turn  to  Prussia  as  possessing  the  only 
restraining  and  reconstructive  power  in  Europe. 
And  when  that  expectation  is  realised,  then  the 
Ancient  Appetites  will  have  their  fill. 

Second:  The  support  of  Bolshevism  by  the 
Appetites  therefore  becomes  logical.  The  Appe- 


38  THE   GBEATEB  WAE 

tites  are  right  in  their  calculation  that  it  is  democ- 
racy that  Bolshevism  will  destroy,  and  autocracy 
that  Bolshevism  will  provide  with  a  long  and 
strong  renaissance.  Bolshevism — the  inevitable 
Nemesis  of  a  century  of  increasing  materialism 
in  human  faith  and  action — the  Nemesis,  also,  of 
a  faithless  and  phrase-mongering  democracy — is 
freedom's  most  mendacious  yet  alluring  enemy. 
The  Bolshevist  dictatorship  of  the  proletaire  is 
nothing  else  than  the  enslavement  of  the  prole- 
taire— is  the  eventual  harnessing  of  the  proletaire 
to  the  triumphal  chariot  of  the  financier.  Hence 
the  American  millionaires  who  have  been  con- 
tributing to  the  Eussian  Bolshevist  cause  have 
been  acting  exactly  according  to  an  evilly  enlight- 
ened self-interest. 

I  do  not  mean,  from  what  I  have  said  in  my 
answer  to  these  two  questions,  that  all  financiers 
are  plotting  for  this  Bolshevik  devastation  as 
preparatory  to  a  Prussianization  of  Europe  and 
Asia  and  Africa.  There  are  chiefs  of  great  finan- 
cial institutions  who  are  today  bowed  down  with 
a  foreknowledge  of  the  universal  terror  drawing 


GERMANISM    AND    BOLSHEVISM  39 

near,  and  who  would,  I  am  certain,  gladly  sacrifice 
their  lives  and  possessions  to  turn  back  the  terror. 
There  are  splendid  and  upstanding  Americans, 
such  as  Mr.  Frank  A.  Vanderlip  of  New  York, 
who  would  spend  themselves  willingly  to  deliver 
the  world  from  that  German  dominion  which 
Bolshevism  is  preparing.  Or  one  has  only  to  read 
Mr.  Clarence  W.  Barren's  book  on  "War  and 
Finance, ' '  to  discern  how  a  man  who  has  given  his 
life  to  the  study  of  financial  problems  presents  a 
uniquely  spiritual  and  well-nigh  apocalyptical 
understanding  of  the  German  menace  and  the 
present  peril  of  mankind. 

But  even  such  as  these,  with  all  the  material 
and  spiritual  resources  they  may  be  able  to 
marshal,  are  not  sufficient  unless  the  understand- 
ing peoples  are  behind  and  supporting  them. 

And  the  Bolshevism  that  is  Russian  and  real, 
if  it  be  not  understandingly  interpreted  and  con- 
quered by  the  democratic  peoples,  can  have  no 
other  end  than  this — a  tide  of  reaction  whereon 
the  Prussian  shall  ride  into  planetary  power, 
possessing  and  exploiting,  for  a  long  time  to 


40  THE   GEEATEB  WAB 

come,  the  nations  whose  representatives  at  Paris 
were  but  able  to  prove,  as  it  has  not  been 
proved  in  two  thousand  years,  how  the  oppor- 
tunity of  man  may  be  immeasurably  greater  than 
man  himself. 


WHICH  SHALL  REMAKE  THE  PEACE- 
GERMANY  OR  DEMOCRACY? 


WHICH   SHALL  REMAKE   THE 

PEACE— GERMANY   OR 

DEMOCRACY? 


YV7ITHOUT  discussing  whether  American 
Senators  hostile  to  the  Peace  of  Paris  be 
inspired  by  patriotism  or  party  politics,  no  mat- 
ter whether  high  or  low  their  motives,  their  pres- 
ent action  will  prove  of  advantage  only  to  the 
German  and  the  Bolshevist. 

I  am  myself  among  those  who  see  no  permanent 
peace  coming  out  of  Paris.  I  see  no  fellowship 
of  democratic  peoples,  no  true  Society  of  Nations, 
provided  by  the  Covenant  which  the  Conference 
has  adopted.  But,  though  the  Peace  be  pro- 
visional only,  though  the  League  be  far  from  the 
Society  of  Nations  for  which  we  hoped,  nothing 
can  be  gained  by  the  Allied  peoples  through  delay 
in  confirming  the  work,  imperfect  as  it  is,  of  the 

43 


44  THE   GBEATEE   WAS 

Conference.  On  the  contrary,  by  rejection  or 
delay,  everything  for  which  we  fought,  both  in 
the  war  and  since  the  armistice,  may  be  lost. 
Moreover,  if  the  Treaty  and  the  Covenant  be 
accepted  and  ratified  immediately — especially 
with  a  clear  understanding,  on  the  part  of  the 
democratic  peoples,  of  the  merely  rudimentary 
or  germinal  character  of  these  instruments — 
they  can  hence  be  changed  and  developed  into 
a  durable  peace,  and  a  Society  of  Nations  may 
yet  take  the  place  of  the  League  for  Dominion 
which  issues  from  Paris. 

The  present  peace  is  all  that  can  be  expected 
from  the  Conference,  constituted  as  it  is;  and  it 
is  the  best  that  can  be  expected  from  existing 
governments.  It  is  the  Peace  of  Paris,  for  the 
moment,  or  no  peace  at  all — perhaps  for  more 
than  one  generation.  If  we  accept  this  Peace, 
however  provisionally,  we  may  at  least  hope  that 
sanity  will  come  to  a  world  which  has  been  for 
a  long  time,  even  for  many  years  before  the  war, 
without  sanity  or  sense  or  true  progress.  To 
reject  it,  or  to  delay  its  confirmation,  means  the 
disintegration  of  a  civilisation  already  shattered 


GEBMANY   OB   DEMOCBACY?  45 

to  its  foundations,  and  sick  with  every  civil  and 
social  disease. 

I  know  that  international  despair  prevails;  it 
would  seem  as  if  no  faith  were  discoverable  upon 
the  earth.  Yet,  terrible  as  the  human  plight  is, 
black  and  deep  and  wide  as  is  the  abyss  upon 
which  we  seem  to  be  brinked,  there  is  withal  a 
ground  of  hope  beneath  our  feet  that  has  never 
been  there  before;  and,  strangely  and  paradoxi- 
cally enough,  we  may  behold,  if  we  have  discern- 
ing eyes,  a  braver  immediate  prospect  than  has 
hitherto  been  ours. 

For  it  is  certain  that  the  world  will  never  go 
back  to  where  it  was  before  the  war;  the  old 
order  can  never  be  restored;  nothing  less  than 
a  free,  federate  and  truly  socialised  world  will 
henceforth  content  mankind;  and  upon  this  cer- 
tainty we  may  internationally  proceed. 


n 

'T'HE  future,  however,  depends  upon  this:  will 
the  democratic  peoples,  having  provisionally 
accepted  the  Peace  of  Paris,  then  awake  quickly 
and  act  collectively — act  with  clear  and  purpose- 
ful heads,  with  clean  and  resolute  souls?  Will 
they  see  and  resolve  upon  a  course  of  reconstruc- 
tion that  cancels  the  peril  of  an  international 
Bolshevist  revolution  and  class  dictatorship  on 
the  one  side,  and  prevents  a  reversion  to  reac- 
tionary and  merely  capitalist  social  control  on 
the  other?  It  is  between  these  two  perils,  each 
menacing  the  world  with  unimaginable  miseries 
and  tyrannies,  that  democracy  must  now  shape 
its  course — the  only  course  that  leads  to  the 
world's  nobler  remaking. 

And  if  now  we  clear-sightedly  and  courageously 
prepare  and  walk  the  democratic  way,  it  may  well 
be  we  shall  be  wondrously  re-enforced :  it  may  be 
we  shall  indeed  find  that  they  who  fight  for  us  are 
more  than  they  that  be  against  us.  We  may  find 

46 


GERMANY   OB   DEMOCRACY  ?  47 

that  the  millions  who  sacrificially  died  are  now 
valiantly  with  us  in  our  struggle  for  the  new  world 
wherewith  so  many  of  them  were  envisioned.  We 
may  find  that  the  war's  physical  and  moral  dev- 
astations, that  the  hate  and  the  hatefulness  which 
seem  to  have  permeated  and  degraded  the  world 
since  the  signing  of  the  armistice,  that  the  seem- 
ing universal  breakdown  of  truth  and  fidelity  and 
all  spiritual  decency, — that  all  these  are  but  the 
harvest  of  a  manifold  ancient  wickedness,  now  to 
be  gathered  and  cast  into  the  unquenchable  fire. 
And  it  may  be,  finally,  that  just  as  the  war,  which 
so  few  foresaw  or  believed  possible,  was  the  pre- 
cipitation of  history's  black  passions  and  forces, 
so  now  a  collective  resolution  and  consecration  of 
the  democratic  peoples  may  predicate  a  great  and 
unprecedented  precipitation  of  universal  good- 
will and  spiritual  power. 


in 

IF  the  peoples  who  hold  to  the  democratic  hope 
fail  in  this  their  hour  of  trial,  if  they  fail  to 
charge  themselves  with  the  radical  remaking  of 
the  Peace  of  Paris,  then  Germany  will  make  the 
new  peace,  and,  after  a  time  of  chaos,  eventually 
reorganize  Europe.  Her  pattern  is  already  pre- 
pared, and  the  weaving  thereof  will  soon  be  pro- 
ceeding. 

She  will  not  proceed  in  the  open  and  directly. 
Her  plans  for  procuring  the  new  peace  will  be  of 
the  precise  moral  order  of  her  preparations  for 
war  before  August,  1914. 

She  will  subsidize  and  intensively  cultivate  now, 
as  she  has  hitherto  subsidized  and  cultivated, 
every  subversive  or  disintegrating  movement 
throughout  Europe,  Asia  and  Africa — and  in 
America  also.  The  Bolshevism  which  she  fos- 
tered in  Russia,  and  which  keeps  for  Germany  her 
Eastern  gates,  will  be  secretly  spread  abroad  by 
her  agencies.  China,  Afghanistan  and  India  are 

48 


GERMANY   OB   DEMOCRACY?  49 

examples  of  a  Bolshevist  propaganda, — resourced 
by  Germany, — which  may  permeate  and  persuade 
the  entire  Mohammedan  world.  Her  policy  now, 
as  before,  will  be  to  ruin  the  world,  in  order  to  re- 
make it  according  to  the  German  pattern,  to  ex- 
ploit and  rule  it  according  to  the  German  mind. 

This  is  in  Germany's  program,  whether  the 
peace  be  signed  or  not.  But  if  America  refuse  to 
confirm  the  peace,  thus  practically  nullifying  the 
total  work  of  the  Paris  Conference,  then  the  Ger- 
man program  will  have  the  free  course  it  could 
not  have  if  the  Peace,  imperfect  as  it  is,  were  pro- 
visionally established. 


IV 

TOUT  the  chief  agency  which  Germany  will  use 
*•*  for  yet  procuring  a  peace  according  to  her 
liking  is  the  official  Socialist  Movement. 

In  each  of  the  Allied  countries,  as  well  as  in  the 
Central  Empires  and  in  Eussia,  the  majority  of 
the  Socialist  parties  continually  sought,  during 
the  war,  a  peace  measurably  favorable  to  Ger- 
many. These  parties  were  at  once  the  refuge  of 
the  pacifist  element  in  all  nations,  and  the  focal 
places  of  German  intrigue.  In  Germany  itself, 
the  Kaiser  and  the  government  had  no  more  con- 
sistent and  faithful  supporters  than  the  Social- 
Democratic  party;  without  the  support  of  this 
party,  Germany  could  not  have  begun  or  con- 
tinued the  war.  In  France,  Socialist  leaders  like 
Jean  Longuet  and  Marcel  Cachin  worked  for  a 
negotiated  peace  from  the  war's  beginning;  they 
also  worked  for  the  restoration  of  the  old  Inter- 
national— which  was  international  only  in  name 
and  altogether  German  in  fact.  .In  Italy,  only  in 

50 


GERMANY   OB   DEMOCRACY?  51 

times  of  serious  national  crisis  did  the  Socialist 
leaders  render  a  nominal  support  to  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war.  In  England,  the  Independent 
Labor  Party,  officially  in  the  ascendant  and  chiefly 
pacifist,  plotted  for  a  peace  of  compromises. 
The  American  Socialist  Party  was  honestly  and 
frankly  pro-German. 

Thus  the  rare  leaders  who  were  possessed 
of  real  statesmanship — such  as  the  truly  great 
Hyndman  of  England  and  Vandervelde  of  Bel- 
gium— were  forced  to  stand  forth  against  the 
International  Socialism  in  which  they  themselves 
had  played  so  great  a  part.  In  America,  such 
men  as  Walling  and  Spargo,  Bohn  and  Stokes,  as 
well  as  the  humble  writer  of  these  words,  were 
compelled  to  withdraw  from  the  Socialist  party. 


HPHE  German  dominance  is  understandable 
*•  enough.  It  was  from  Germany  that  Social- 
ism came.  From  Germany  came  the  great  dog- 
matists of  materialism,  Marx  and  Engels;  and 
they  came  so  Prussianly  as  to  impose  themselves 
upon  all  political  and  labor  movements  making 
for  radical  and  revolutionary  change. 

Socialism  was  not  born  in  Germany,  it  is  true, 
but  in  France,  fathered  by  Saint-Simon  and  Fou- 
rier, and  with  much  of  the  inspiration  and  pur- 
pose of  primitive  Christianity.  But  the  French 
movement  was  first  discredited  and  then  seized 
upon  by  the  German  dogmatists;  and,  like  every 
movement  that  has  gone  to  Berlin,  it  underwent 
the  Prussian  debasement  and  took  on  the  Prus- 
sian image.  Hence  International  Socialism,  so 
far  as  its  official  or  recognized  parties  count,  so 
far  as  its  Marxian  basis  is  concerned,  has  ever 
been  Prussian  in  its  mentality;  and  it  has  ever 
proceeded  upon  a  program  essentially  an  amplifi- 

52 


GEBMANY   OB   DEMOCBACY?  53 

cation  of  the  Hegelian  or  Prussian  state.  Its 
claim  to  be  socialist,  its  claim  to  be  democratic, 
has  been  sheerest  self-deception  and  a  stupendous 
imposture  upon  international  labor  and  radical- 
ism. 

Bismarck  himself,  even  in  his  time,  came  to 
value  and  patronise  the  Social  Democratic  Party 
of  Germany  as  a  means  toward  the  accomplish- 
ment of  his  imperial  capitalist  ends.  And,  since 
the  beginning  of  the  war,  the  German  govern- 
ment has  been  able  to  use  Socialist  parties,  in  all 
the  Allied  nations  except  Belgium,  for  the  propa- 
ganda of  Germanism.  This  is  denied,  of  course, 
by  the  official  leaders;  but  it  is  no  less  true — no 
less  true  that  the  negotiated  peace  which  Socialist 
leaders  either  secretly  or  openly  worked  for  has 
been  a  peace  acceptable  to  Germany.  And  today 
all  these  parties  are  preparing  for  the  remaking 
of  a  peace  according  to  the  German  desire. 


VI 


nnHE  Peace  of  Paris  will  have  to  be  remade  — 
this  I  have  already  declared  —  but  it  is  of  su- 
preme importance  to  the  human  future  that  it 
shall  be  made  by  democracy  and  not  by  existing 
International  Socialism  —  the  Socialism  which  has 
proved  itself  faithless  and  incompetent  in  both 
war  and  peace,  and  whose  Marxian  program,  not- 
withstanding its  revolutionary  jargon,  is  pat- 
terned precisely  upon  the  capitalist  politic  and 
the  Prussian  state. 

Yet  it  is  just  this  peril  which  is  coming  upon 
the  world  apace  —  the  peril  of  a  German  peace 
procured,  in  the  course  of  two  or  three  years, 
through  International  Socialist  agencies. 

No  other  than  a  German  peace  can  come  out  of 
the  Socialist  parties  of  the  present.  The  Social- 
ists of  today  believe  in  Germany;  in  German  eco- 
nomic and  political  doctrine;  in  the  efficiency  of 
the  German  state;  in  the  general  superiority  of 

54 


GERMANY   OB   DEMOCRACY?  55 

the  German  Socialist  mind  and  leadership.  Thus 
any  peace  made  by  International  Socialists,  as 
their  parties  are  now  constituted,  will  be  the 
handiwork  of  German  believers — of  men  such  as 
Troelstra  of  Holland,  of  Longuet  and  Cachin  of 
France,  of  Henderson  and  MacDonald  of  Eng- 
land. Any  peace  made  by  these  leaders  will  be, 
no  matter  what  they  say  to  the  contrary,  a  Ger- 
man peace.  It  will  professedly  be  a  peace  made 
upon  the  basis  of  international  justice  and  good- 
will— and  if  it  were  such  a  peace  in  fact,  then  we 
could  work  for  its  coming  and  welcome  its  appear- 
ance. But  it  will  be  nothing  of  the  kind;  it  will 
be  a  peace  inspired  and  formed  by  the  German 
mind — a  peace  formed  unto  the  German  concep- 
tion of  international  justice  and  good- will;  a 
peace  made  in  Germany  as  well  as  for  Germany. 
For  just  as  the  fetish  and  superstition  of  German 
authority  and  superiority  is  over  International 
Socialism,  so  a  conception  of  the  inferiority  and 
incapacity  of  all  other  nations  is  regnant  in  the 
minds  of  its  German  high  priests.  And  this 
Germanized  Socialism,  this  Germanized  inter- 
nationalism, is  Germany's  first-chosen  agency  for 


56  THE   GEEATEB   WAB 

still  winning  the  war — if  she  has  not  already  won 
it  through  the  delinquent  peace  of  Paris. 

No,  the  Peace  must  not  be  remade  by  the  Inter- 
national Socialism  of  today — Socialism  itself 
must  be  remade  ere  it  can  be  trusted  by  the  peo- 
ples. As  certainly  as  the  bankruptcy  of  sheer 
capitalism  has  been  demonstrated  by  the  war  and 
the  Paris  Conference,  so  certainly  has  the  intellec- 
tual incapacity  and  moral  infidelity  of  existing 
International  Socialism  been  demonstrated;  the 
political  and  spiritual  incompetence  of  its  mate- 
rialist philosophy  and  tactic  are  manifoldly  mani- 
fest. Not  unto  such  forces  as  these  can  the 
democratic  hope  and  the  new  social  creation  be 
committed. 


VII 

A  NOTHER  important  if  not  equally  powerful 
agency  for  yet  procuring  a  German  peace  is 
Germany's  organized  economic  penetration.    This 
was  incredibly  universal  before  the  war;  it  con- 
tinued during  the  war;  it  proceeds  now. 

What  we  of  the  Allied  nations  so  fatally  fail  to 
realize  is  the  fact  that  Germany  is  prepared  to 
cope  with  even  the  most  disastrous  defeat,  and 
with  the  most  drastic  peace  based  upon  that  de- 
feat She  has  long  ago  prepared  for  defeat — she 
is  today  preparing  for  defeat — as  thoroughly  as 
she  was  previously  preparing  for  war.  The  ma- 
chinery of  her  industry  is  unharmed,  ready  for 
operation  the  moment  peace  is  signed.  Her 
power  for  quick  industrial  recuperation  is  im- 
measurably greater  than  she  has  led  us  to  believe, 
or  than  we  have  foreseen.  The  gates  of  the  East 
will  be  open  to  her,  no  matter  what  happens  in 
Russia.  Her  commercial  agents,  who  are  always 
diplomatic  agents  also,  are  today  active  in  War- 

57 


58  THE   GREATER   WAB 

saw,  in  Moscow,  in  Teheran,  in  Kabul,  in  Peking; 
nor  are  they  absent  from  Prance  and  Italy,  from 
England  and  America.  Along  the  cross-ways  of 
Switzerland,  commercial  intercourse  between  Ger- 
many and  Allied  countries  has  been  proceeding 
since  the  signing  of  the  armistice.  Great  capi- 
talist interests  of  the  Allied  countries,  as  well  as 
of  Spain  and  Holland  and  Switzerland,  though 
listed  in  other  than  German  names,  are  really  Ger- 
man property.  German  efficiency,  in  this  field  of 
economic  penetration  and  exploitation,  coupled 
with  intrigue  in  the  domestic  affairs  of  all  nations, 
is  beyond  anything  within  the  range  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  perspicacity  or  practice.  It  is  a  fact  we 
have  ignored,  but  a  fact  we  shall  have  to  face  and 
to  challenge.  It  is  a  fact  that  may,  if  evaded  and 
unchallenged,  occultly  transmute  the  Allied  vic- 
tory into  a  German  domination  of  Europe  and 
Asia  and  Africa.  Germany  counts  upon  this 
efficiency  for  the  accomplishment  of  just  this  end. 


vm 

DUT  we  shall  meet  none  of  the  ways  or  weapons 
of  this  new  German  menace  by  mere  procla- 
mation or  suppression.  The  German  commercial 
efficiency  can  be  dealt  with  only  by  a  more  highly 
energised  efficiency  of  our  own.  The  peril  that 
inheres  in  the  German  mind  of  International 
Socialism  cannot  be  met  by  the  attempted  sup- 
pression of  Socialist  movements  or  leaders.  It 
can  only  be  met  by  openly  and  tolerantly  debating, 
with  both  these  and  other  leaders  and  movements, 
the  whole  international  future. 

In  fine,  the  new  and  greater  German  peril,  preg- 
nant with  possible  German  world-dominion,  can 
be  met  only  by  a  renascent  and  anointed  democ- 
racy, arisen  and  resolute  through  all  the  nations 
that  have  been  with  Germany  at  war,  co-operating 
with  the  incipient  German  democracy  so  highly 
championed  by  such  men  as  Muehlon,  Foerster 
and  Schlieben — even  by  such  as  Bernstein  and 
Haase. 

59 


IX 

CO  often,  in  the  course  of  the  war,  and  with  little 
effect  I  fear,  I  tried  to  explain  that  the  war 
would  only  begin  when  the  war  ended.  The  Great 
War  is  but  a  prelude  to  a  greater  war;  and  this 
greater  war — -the  war  between  Germanism  and 
democracy — now  spreads  its  vaster  and  more  fate- 
ful fields. 

It  is  identical  with  the  war  between  reactionary 
capitalism  and  democracy.  For  the  reactionary 
capitalism  of  the  Allied  nations,  if  it  succeed  not 
in  the  utter  political  destruction  of  Germany  and 
the  seizure  of  German  industry  and  trade,  will 
straightway  ally  itself  with  a  counter-revolution 
in  Germany,  making  the  restored  Prussian  power 
its  citadel.  It  is  altogether  to  the  interests  of 
the  international  money-lenders,  of  the  mobilized 
Ancient  Appetites,  to  restore  and  preserve  an 
autocratic  Germany.  Reactionary  international 
capitalism  will  turn  to  this,  in  the  end — in  fact  is 
already  revolving  this  program,  already  tenta- 
tively planning  its  fulfilment. 

60 


KTOE  is  Germanism  the  only  menace  democracy 
will  have  to  discern  and  withstand.  The 
forces  of  disintegration,  all  roughly  bearing  the 
name  of  Bolshevism,  will  malifically  assail  the 
movements  making  for  democratic  reconstruction. 
Nor  only  in  the  rear,  but  from  every  side,  will 
Bolshevism  seek  to  undermine  the  ground  beneath 
the  democratic  advance.  And  all  these  disinte- 
grating movements  will,  for  the  time  being,  work 
in  alliance  with  Germany. 

So,  thus  beset  by  the  forces  making  for  the  class 
autocracy  of  the  Bolshevist, — and  each  of  these 
forces  the  deadly  enemy  of  the  truly  socialised 
and  democratic  man, — each  the  deadly  enemy  of 
freedom  and  the  human  soul, — so,  thus  encirc- 
lingly  beset,  must  an  emboldened  and  purified 
democracy  go  forth  to  conquer  and  create  the  new 
world  for  which  all  the  baffled  generations  of  men 
have  waited,  and  for  which  the  tribes  and  the 
nations  now  stretch  forth  worn  and  appealing 
hands. 

61 


62  THE   GEEATEB   WAB 

But  who,  or  what,  is  sufficient  for  these  things  T 
God  knows,  not  I.  But  that  both  sufficiency  and 
efficiency  are  embryon  in  our  democracy,  and  that 
they  are  appointed  to  birth  and  to  love's  lordship 
of  society, — this  I  believe.  I  am  beset,  even  in 
this  darkest  hour,  with  a  great  hope,  not  passive 
but  active  and  vigilant,  and  sometimes  ascending 
into  ineffable  faith,  that  out  of  this  evil  time  will 
arise  a  world-citizenry,  gifted  with  a  wise  and 
universal  good-will,  and  altogether  able  for  the 
creation  of  a  noble  and  beautiful  world-order. 

I  have  glimpsed,  I  think,  from  my  watch  upon 
Europe's  quaking  walls,  an  impending  freedom 
and  fraternity,  that  would,  if  laid  hold  of,  over- 
pay the  world  for  the  war's  worst  woes.  An  earth 
wherein  the  nations  choose  righteousness  for  their 
portion,  wherein  they  choose  each  other's  good, 
and  each  of  them  replete  with  the  peace  and  the 
progress  which  righteousness  begets,  this  is  at 
least, — is  at  last, — humanly  possible.  Beyond  this 
evil  time,  and  in  plain  view,  if  our  sight  be 
cleansed  for  the  vision,  outspreads  the  Canaan  of 
our  ageless  quest — that  providential  society,  that 
immortal  community  of  nations,  that  candor  and 


GERMANY   OB   DEMOCRACY?  63 

equality  of  opportunity,  that  democracy  and  fra- 
ternity in  the  exercise  of  power,  that  beatification 
of  all  labor  and  all  being,  that  common  reverence 
for  each  soul  and  all  service,  which  the  heart  of 
the  world  desires,  and  which  the  justice  of  love 
provides. 


THE  JUDGMENT  DAY  OF  DEMOCRACY 


THE  JUDGMENT  DAY   OF 
DEMOCRACY* 


I  SHALL  strive  to  sketch  for  you,  though 
roughly  and  hastily  I  fear,  somewhat  of  the 
world-drama  of  today  as  I  behold  it.  I  shall  not 
try  to  pass  judgment  on  this  movement  or  that, 
but  rather  try  to  foreshadow  the  oncoming  con- 
flict between  the  concentrating  capitalist  control 
of  society  and  the  revolutionary  movements  gen- 
erally classed  under  the  head  of  Bolshevism ;  and 
then  to  urge  the  test,  the  supreme  and  perhaps 
last  opportunity,  which  this  conflict  sets  before 
democracy. 

The  great  war  through  which  we  have  passed — 
so  terrible  in  its  effects  as  to  be  beyond  mortal 
calculation — is  none  the  less  but  a  prelude  to  the 

*  An  address  spoken  before  the  students  of  the  University  of 
Bale,  May  9th,  1919,  and  stenographically  taken  down. 

67 


68  THE   GEEATEE   WAE 

greater  struggle  at  hand.  It  is  upon  the  real 
drama  that  the  curtain  is  about  to  ring  up;  and 
it  is  a  drama  so  predestinative  and  cosmical  as  to 
place  the  war  in  the  category  of  the  incidental.  It 
is  to  give  you  a  clue  to  the  drama,  to  appraise  as 
best  I  can  its  prophetical  values, — hoping  thus  to 
enable  you  to  form  your  own  judgment  and  make 
your  own  decisions, — that  I  am  now  before  you. 


II 

TTHE  present  activities  of  mankind  are  staged  in 
what  we  commonly  call  the  capitalist  mode  of 
production  and  distribution.  There  are  remnants 
and  strata  of  earlier  societies,  it  is  true — espe- 
cially of  feudalism.  But,  on  the  whole,  human 
society  as  it  is  now  constituted,  and  in  all  its  pro- 
cesses, its  rewards  and  opportunities,  is  em- 
bosomed in  the  profit-maker's  ownership  of  in- 
dustry. And,  according  to  the  old  political  econo- 
mist, and  also  according  to  the  possessing  or 
privileged  classes,  this  private  possession  and 
exploitation  of  the  world's  productive  opportuni- 
ties, of  its  machinery  and  materials,  stimulates 
the  greatest  initiative ;  procures  the  largest  indus- 
trial development  and  safest  social  administra- 
tion ;  and  achieves  the  best  general  human  results. 
I  hardly  need  to  say  to  an  audience  of  university 
students  that  capitalism,  involving  as  it  does  the 
final  social  control,  logically  and  inevitably  be- 

69 


70  THE   GEEATEE   WAS 

comes  the  directive  force  of  the  world's  govern- 
ments and  governors. 

It  inevitably  comes  about,  too,  tinder  this  sys- 
tem of  production,  that  the  owners  of  the  world's 
capital  control  the  world's  sources  of  information. 
The  public  press,  owned  by  the  dominant  interests, 
naturally  conveys  the  news  of  the  day  in  such 
forms  and  with  such  editorial  comment  as  serve 
those  interests.  Likewise  the  institutions  of  the 
church,  Catholic  and  Protestant  alike,  materially 
dependent  as  they  are,  are  compelled,  even  though 
unconsciously,  to  support  the  views  and  interests 
of  the  owners  and  to  distrust  and  discredit  the 
movements  and  voices  of  organized  or  militant 
labor.  The  same  is  true  of  university  teaching, 
especially  in  countries  like  America,  where  uni- 
versities are  privately  endowed.  Indeed,  in  what- 
ever mental  sphere  we  move,  a  last  analysis  will 
show  that  the  owners  of  the  world's  raw  mate- 
rials, of  its  tools  of  production  and  means  of  dis- 
tribution, are  the  actual  if  occult  creators  and 
directors  of  the  world's  state  of  mind.  Even  the 
action  of  mobs,  of  seemingly  incoherent  revolu- 
tions such  as  those  in  Mexico,  or  of  the  struggle 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCRACY  71 

between  the  Bolshevist  and  the  Omsk  govern- 
ments in  Russia,  are  ordered  and  directed  by  the 
capitalist — though  the  bridled  and  saddled  revolu- 
tionist knows  it  not. 

It  also  comes  about  that,  up  to  the  stage  of 
intelligent  and  purposeful  revolution  and  the  will- 
ing self-sacrifice  of  whole  peoples  upon  the  revolu- 
tionary altar,  they  who  control  production  possess 
a  fearful  and  perverting  power  over  the  peoples 
whose  lives  depend  thereupon.  This  power  may 
extend  even  unto  the  issues  of  life  and  death — 
the  life  and  death  of  the  soul  as  well  as  of  the 
body.  The  man  who  owns  a  manufacturing  plant 
upon  which  three  hundred  men  depend  for  their 
bread,  and  to  which  owner  they  are  forced  to  sell 
their  labor  or  starve,  measurably  owns  the  men. 
They  may  refuse  to  work  for  one  owner  and  sell 
their  labor  to  another;  but  that  does  not  change 
the  fact  that  to  be  forced,  at  the  point  of  starva- 
tion, to  sell  one's  labor  to  another  man  is  to  be 
forced  to  sell  one's  mind  and  body  into  a  sub- 
stantial servitude.  He  who  owns  my  bread 
owns  me — unless  I  choose  to  die  rather  than  be 
owned. 


72  THE   GBEATEB   WAS 

I  am  not,  for  the  moment,  condemning  this  capi- 
talist control:  I  am  not  debating  whether  or  no 
any  other  system  be  possible  or  practicable :  I  am 
merely  trying  to  state  the  system. 


ni 

XTOW  the  war,  the  conclusions  of  which  are  still 
being  debated  and  confounded  at  Paris,  has 
precipitated  the  definitive  crisis  of  capitalist  so- 
ciety. It  is  capitalism  that  is  on  trial,  so  far  as 
the  peoples  are  concerned,  at  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence— if  such  we  may  accomodately  call  it;  and 
it  is  the  political  and  spiritual  incompetence  of 
capitalism,  already  demonstrated  by  the  war,  that 
is  being  more  decisively  demonstrated  by  the  in- 
credible incapacity  of  the  Conference  to  procure 
peace  for  the  peoples,  or  to  read  the  doom  now 
written  on  all  the  present  world's  walls. 

The  capitalist  society  is  now  the  stage  whereon 
the  world-drama  I  have  bespoken  shall  be  per- 
formed— a  drama  in  which  all  human  beings  shall 
become  at  once  spectators  and  actors. 

The  conflict  whose  scenes  are  about  to  be  un- 
rolled concerns  and  includes  our  whole  planetary 
existence.  It  is  a  conflict  between  the  respective 
principles  of  democracy  and  those  of  a  proletarian 

73 


74  THE   GREATER   WAR 

dictatorship.  On  the  side  of  democracy  the  con- 
flict is  for  the  transformation  or  democratization 
of  society;  those  who  follow  the  idea  of  a  prole- 
tarian dictatorship  seek  the  present  society's  de- 
struction, expecting  the  rise  of  a  new  and  juster 
society  upon  the  ruins. 

In  now  presenting  to  you,  as  clearly  and  quickly 
as  I  can,  a  picture  of  this  conflict,  of  the  supreme 
human  opportunity  which  it  imposes,  I  have 
gathered  what  I  have  to  say  under  the  title,  "The 
Judgment  Day  of  Democracy." 


IV 

I  DO  not  need  to  attempt  a  definition  of  democ- 
racy. No  man  can  present  a  definition  to  which 
another  will  exactly  agree.  Moreover,  our  diffi- 
culty is  enormously  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  we 
have  no  democratic  experience,  upon  a  large  scale, 
to  which  to  appeal. 

It  is  as  true  as  it  is  commonplace  to  say  that 
essential  Christianity  has  never  been  tried;  and 
it  is  equally  true  that  democracy  has  never  been 
tried.  Just  as  there  has  never  been  a  Christian 
society,  a  Christian  civilisation,  so  there  has  ex- 
isted no  such  thing  as  a  democratic  state  or  social 
order.  "We  have  had  historic  Christianity:  we 
have  grown  accustomed  to  democratic  phrases: 
but  historic  Christianity  has  little  to  do  with 
Christ  and  the  so-called  democratic  states  have 
little  to  do  with  democracy.  The  teachings  of 
Christ  have  never  been  applied  to  world-organisa- 
tion; society  has  never  been  democratically  ad- 
ministrated. The  nations,  or  rather  the  govern- 

75 


76  THE   GREATER   WAS 

ments,  which  have  clothed  themselves  and  their 
constitutions  in  democratic  phraseology  have 
no  notion  of  what  democracy  means,  no  inten- 
tion of  putting  Christ  into  social  and  industrial 
practice. 


W/HATEVER  its  possible  variations  as  to 
form,  democracy  posits  a  state  or  society 
which,  in  all  its  scope  and  activities,  provides 
equality  of  opportunity  and  freedom  of  choice  for 
each  individual.  It  does  not  imply  equality  in  the 
communistic  sense,  either  materially  or  theoret- 
ically. It  does  not  mean  equality  of  possessions ; 
equality  of  intellectual  or  moral  conception; 
equality  of  spiritual  outlook  or  physical  stature. 
In  the  democratic  society,  one  man  might  choose 
to  hoard  his  share  of  the  social  product  for  a 
period  of  years,  in  order  to  be  free  to  travel,  to 
write  songs  or  poems,  or  to  pursue  some  other 
end  in  later  life.  Another  might  choose  to  spend 
his  share  of  the  social  product  day  by  day,  under 
the  knowledge  that,  if  he  faithfully  serve  society 
through  his  mature  years,  society  will  be  equally 
faithful  to  him  in  his  concluding  years. 

No,  the  equality  implicit  in  democracy  is  not 
arithmetical  or  mechanical.    While  it  means  co- 

77 


78  THE   GEEATEB   WAB 

operation  in  production  and  distribution,  associa- 
tion in  administration,  it  also  means  the  right  of 
each  man  to  choose  and  do  the  work  that  he  likes 
best,  and  to  have  personal  possessions  wherewith 
to  express  himself.  It  means  that  each  man  must 
be  economically  and  socially  free  to  discover  and 
fulfil  his  own  life,  in  so  far  as  the  living  of  his  own 
life  does  not  destroy  or  restrict  the  right  and  the 
power  of  others  to  like  choice  and  fulfilment.  A 
true  democracy  would  indeed  invite,  would  invoke, 
the  largest  variety  of  individual  being  and  experi- 
ence. It  would  regard  each  life  as  something 
precious  to  the  whole  and  the  whole  as  inviolably 
responsible  for  each.  Democracy,  thus  realised, 
would  present  a  world  of  happy  and  accordant 
differences,  of  unending  social  and  spiritual  sur- 
prise, in  contrast  with  the  monstrous  monotony 
and  mediocrity  now  universally  existent. 

Democracy  conceives  of  the  individual  man  as 
the  supreme  common  concern;  conceives  that  it 
is  for  the  guaranteeing  of  the  full  development  of 
each  individual  that  men  ought  to  associate  them- 
selves together  in  mutual  groups  called  the  state. 
And  the  democratic  conception  is  true :  a  civilisa- 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCRACY  79 

tion  has  actual  worth,  it  has  a  right  to  exist  in- 
deed, only  according  to  the  measure  that  it  liber- 
ates and  resources  the  individual  soul  for  the  con- 
quest of  liberty  and  life.  This  enablement  of  each 
man  to  achieve  his  freedom  and  to  become  a  mani- 
fest son  of  God  is,  so  far  as  we  know,  what  our 
universe  is  for.  And  only  so  far  as  the  state  to 
this  end  works  with  God,  has  it  any  part  with 
democracy. 

In  democratic  theory,  the  state  is  created,  is 
constantly  ordered  and  controlled,  by  the  com- 
mon will.  A  truly  democratic  state  can  never  be 
static  but  fluid — in  a  constant  process  of  upward 
change  and  unf  oldment. 

Now  you  students  are  well  aware  that,  as  I  have 
already  declared,  a  democratic  state  has  never 
existed.  Perhaps  the  two  nearest  past  approaches 
to  democracy  have  been  the  Athenian  state  in  the 
time  of  Pericles — and  this  notwithstanding  the  ex- 
istence of  slavery — and  the  early  Saxon  communi- 
ties of  England  around  and  before  the  time  of 
Alfred  the  Great.  In  a  limited  sense,  the  streets 
of  Athens  and  the  Saxon  "Wittenagemote  were 
democratic.  And  the  Swiss  Confederation,  too, 


80  THE    GREATER   WAR 

is  a  modern  approach  to  the  democratic  idea.  But 
what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  the  great  democ- 
racies are  democratic  in  no  true  or  essential  sense ; 
and  it  is  only  the  sheerest  illusion, — an  illusion 
pregnant  with  universal  woe  and  confusion  at 
that, — to  call  these  European  and  American  states 
democratic. 


VI 

'"THE  mere  fact  of  universal  suffrage  does  not 
at  all  assure  a  democratic  government.  Eng- 
land has  achieved,  in  the  course  of  the  centuries, 
a  large  measure  of  freedom.  Yet  England  has 
ever  been  governed  by  a  privileged  or  ruling 
class;  which  class,  controlling  the  electoral  and 
governmental  machinery,  has  always  had  its  way 
and  imposed  its  will  upon  the  people.  France  is 
a  bureaucratic  republic  and  far  from  being  a 
democracy.  The  American  republic  has  always 
been  plutocratic  in  its  political  texture  and  pro- 
cedure, in  its  social  mentality  and  morality.  The 
constitution  of  the  United  States,  so  far  from 
being  an  instrument  to  enable  the  peoples  to 
govern  themselves,  was  avowedly  and  success- 
fully devised  (by  Alexander  Hamilton  and  those 
associated  with  him)  with  the  idea  of  preventing 
such  political  self-government;  of  keeping  the 
government  in  the  hands  of  the  great  possessors. 
Even  Switzerland,  notwithstanding  its  democratic 

81 


82  THE   GEEATEE   WAS 

approach,  has  still  far  to  go  before  becoming 
actually  democratic. 

Consider  this:  in  every  one  of  the  so-called 
democratic  countries,  a  large  majority  of  the 
peoples,  if  today  given  opportunity  and  effectual 
choice,  would  vote  for  immediate  social  reforms. 
But  no  government  is  largely  enacting  these 
reforms.  I  am  not,  for  the  moment,  discussing 
whether  it  be  peoples  or  governments  that  are 
right :  I  only  want  to  point  out  that,  until  govern- 
ment and  people  are  identical — (and  they  are  not 
anywhere  identical) — no  such  thing  as  a  demo- 
cratic state  exists.  And  so  far  are  they  from 
being  identical,  that,  although  both  the  labor 
and  the  intelligence  of  the  so-called  democracies 
are  clamorous  for  social  reconstruction,  the 
possessing  or  governing  class  in  each,  manipu- 
lating the  electoral  and  governmental  machinery 
in  occult  ways  the  peoples  do  not  understand  and 
do  not  yet  know  how  to  change,  are  powerful 
enough  to  prevent:  the  possessors  and  their 
political  servants  are  powerful  enough  to  refuse 
the  peoples  an  opportunity  to  choose. 


VII 

HTHE  failure  of  democracy  is  not  due  to  theo- 
retical  flaws,  but  to  the  fact,  as  I  have  already 
said,  that  its  theory  has  never  been  put  into 
practice.  Democracy  has  never  functioned  itself 
in  the  state,  in  society,  in  industry.  There  exist 
no  institutional  organs  wherethrough  democracy 
can  effectuate  itself. 

But,  furthermore,  the  failure  of  democracy,  up 
till  now,  is  in  part  due  to  the  philosophical  and 
moral  stupidity  of  its  advocates:  in  treating  the 
political  life  of  man  as  something  apart  from 
either  his  economic  or  his  spiritual  life,  they 
have  never  recognized  the  foundation  fact  of  our 
planetary  existence — namely,  that  the  life  of  man 
is  divinely  one  and  indivisible.  Mankind  is  one 
organism,  economic,  political,  intellectual,  spirit- 
ual. Life  cannot  be  divided  into  compartments. 
Neither  the  political  nor  the  spiritual  man  can  be 
dealt  with  apart  from  the  economic  man ;  nor  the 
economic  apart  from  the  spiritual  or  political. 

83 


84  THE   GREATER   WAR 

Life  can  only  be  dealt  with  as  a  whole,  as  a  divine 
and  indivisible  unity. 

Thus  you  cannot  have  a  democratic  state 
without  a  democratized  industry,  a  democratized 
order  of  education,  a  democratized  sociality  and 
morality.  You  cannot  be  an  autonomous  indi- 
vidual in  the  spiritual  sphere,  in  the  political 
sphere,  and  be  a  coerced  or  enslaved  individual 
in  the  economic  or  social  sphere.  You  cannot 
have  your  body  enslaved  and  your  soul  free ;  nor 
can  you  have  your  soul  enslaved  and  your  body 
free.  You  cannot  anywhere  have  democracy,  you 
cannot  anywhere  have  freedom,  you  cannot  any- 
where have  truth,  you  cannot  anywhere  have 
organizing  and  administrative  love,  without  hav- 
ing these  living  forces  or  substances  operative 
everywhere. 

You  cannot  have  democracy  in  the  state  unless 
the  total  exercise  of  social  power  is  democratised. 

Democracy  must  be  applied  to  the  totality  of 
man's  life  and  activity  or  it  cannot  be  at  all. 

Hence  democracy  must  repent  of  its  flamboyant 
phrases,  of  its  hesitations  and  scepticisms, — of 
hypocrisies  now  guilty  of  the  blood  of  a  hundred 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCRACY  85 

million  humans,  ere  the  final  roll  be  called, — must 
repent,  and  immediately  enter  upon  the  conquest 
of  life.  It  must  depart  from  the  diabolic  dualism 
that  has  rendered  it  so  faithless  and  futile.  It 
must  rid  itself  of  compartmental  notions  of  life, 
and  scale  the  entire  octave  of  man's  associative 
procedure  and  common  interest.  Not  only  in- 
dustry— to  which  we  have  not  yet  begun  to  apply 
the  democratic  principle — not  only  the  processes 
of  production  and  distribution,  but  our  arts  and 
our  sciences,  our  social  moods  and  habits,  our 
religions  and  moral  codes,  and  whatsoever  faith 
the  soul  follows,  these  must  all  pass  into  the 
democratic  communion. 

It  is  into  this  actual  democracy,  consisting 
of  self-governing  and  equally  empowered  and 
autonomous  individuals,  that  our  planetary  evo- 
lution must  now  proceed.  This,  or  else  the  very 
word  democracy  will  become  a  derision  upon  the 
earth. 


VIH 

pVEMOCRACY  has  failed  thus  far,  because  it 
has  been  faithless;  because  it  has  never,  in 
a  single  crisis,  kept  faith  with  itself  or  with  the 
peoples  whom  it  pretended  to  possess  and  direct. 
And  it  is  due  to  democracy's  faithlessness  that 
today  mankind  paralytically  halts  between  two 
autocracies:  that  of  the  reactionaire  and  conces- 
sionaire on  the  one  side,  that  of  the  Bolshevist 
revolution  and  dictatorship  on  the  other.  And 
either  we  must  now,  through  some  miracle  of  un- 
derstanding and  decision,  give  ourselves  over  en- 
tirely to  the  democratic  experiment,  or  our  demo- 
cratic theory,  our  fabled  democratic  governments, 
will  become  as  dust  before  the  whirlwind  of 
retribution  soon  overtaking  our  alike  faithless 
Christianity  and  faithless  democracy:  for  it  is, 
I  repeat,  the  like  faithlessness  of  these  two  that 
has  brought  us  into  the  veritable  hell  wherein  we 
and  all  the  world  now  wander  in  hopeless  aston- 
ishment or  unintelligible  struggle. 

86 


IX 

HTHE  stage  is  set  for  the  conflict.  We  are 
beholders  of  democracy's  last  chance  to  con- 
quer, to  penetrate,  and  to  organize  our  life  and 
institutions.  Has  democracy  any  inner  spirit  or 
native  power  wherewith  to  regenerate  itself,  first 
of  all,  and  then  to  lay  hold  of  existing  structures 
of  society  and  redeem  and  transform  them! 

The  question  stands  forth  before  the  peoples, 
sharply  defined  and  imperative,  investing  the 
international  wilderness,  the  universal  reek  and 
ruin,  with  a  divine  and  predestinative  purpose. 

The  question  must  be  answered.  We  cannot 
stay  where  we  are ;  society  is  already  dissolving ; 
and  only  a  great  democratic  revival,  springing 
out  of  the  Divine  Spirit  perennial  in  the  human 
soil,  can  change  the  world's  dissolution  into  the 
world's  new  birth. 

Nor  need  we  wait  for  political  action,  in  order 
to  begin  the  transformation.  I  imagine  the  politi- 
cal state  will  play  the  lesser  part  in  both  the  initia- 

87 


88  THE   GREATER   WAS 

tion  and  the  administration  of  the  new  society. 
The  state  is  incompetent — incompetent  in  indus- 
trial and  social  spheres — when  it  comes  to  act  for 
the  democratic  man.  Even  now,  the  notion  of 
society  as  political  is  becoming  obselete. 

Nor  would  the  socialist  state  proposed  by  Marx 
be  less  incompetent,  so  far  as  the  soul  is  con- 
cerned, nor  less  tyrannical — in  fact  it  would  be 
more  incompetent,  more  tyrannical — than  the 
plutocratic  state.  The  way  into  democracy,  into 
a  free  and  juster  order,  lies  not  in  substituting 
a  Frankenstein  collective  autocracy,  inevitably 
destructive  of  all  that  makes  the  soul's  existence 
worth  while,  for  the  sheer  financial  autocracy 
under  which  we  now  plot  and  grope  adown  the 
ways  of  death  and  universal  darkness. 

The  way  into  democracy  is  through  the  volun- 
tary and  administrative  co-operation  of  indus- 
trial and  commercial  capital  with  associated 
labor.  It  is  possible,  by  such  co-operation,  to 
convert  every  manufacturing  plant,  every  organi- 
zation and  highway  of  transportation,  every  busi- 
ness house,  every  university,  and  indeed  every 
sphere  of  associative  activity,  into  a  happy  and 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OP   DEMOCRACY  89 

life-giving  democracy.  The  entire  processional 
of  production  and  distribution  might  thus  be 
made  sacramental;  might  be  made  the  means 
of  abundant  and  ever-enlarging  life  for  each 
individual;  might  be  made  the  vehicle  of  each 
man's  liberation  for  spiritual  adventure  and  in- 
crease. 

There  is  no  need,  I  say,  to  wait.  Every  em- 
ployer, every  labor  union,  can  move  in  the  demo- 
cratic direction  at  once.  Many  experiments  will 
have  to  be  made,  many  unforeseen  and  incalcul- 
able difficulties  will  have  to  be  overcome.  But 
the  difficulties  of  moving  into  the  democratic 
communion  are  as  nothing  compared  to  the  diffi- 
culties of  staying  outside  that  communion.  It 
is  not  the  experimental  advance  into  the  new 
world — it  is  the  present  reactionary  halt  in  the 
old  world — that  forebodes  the  centuried  collapse 
of  humanity. 

The  democratic  evolution  of  industry  and  trade 
may  ultimately  discard  whom  we  know  as  the 
employer;  but  his  place  will  remain  as  adminis- 
trator. Social  administration  will  gradually 
supersede  the  unhappy  profiteer,  as  well  as  the 


90  THE   GEEATEB  WAE 

archaic  political  state.  The  organisation  and 
leadership  of  each  sphere  of  collective  life  and 
action,  the  functioning  of  each  social  need  and 
its  fulfilment,  will  be  in  the  hands  of  the  ex- 
perts— of  those  who  are  the  true  intellectual  and 
spiritual  chieftains.  The  poverty  and  puerility, 
the  meanness  and  ignorance,  the  intellectual  and 
moral  anarchy,  the  total  incompetency  indeed, 
of  the  present  politico-capitalist  government  of 
society  will  thus  be  progressively  scrapped  and 
gladly  forgotten. 

And  all  this  would  be  soon — if  the  peoples  but 
knew  how  their  world  is  managed.  If  the  peoples 
but  realised  with  how  little  brains  the  world  is 
governed,  of  how  it  is  governed  without  scruple 
or  sense  or  soul,  they  would  lose  not  a  day  in 
building  the  highway  into  the  democratic  and 
hence  Christly  society. 

There  would  have  to  be  co-ordination  of  all 
social  interests  and  groups,  it  is  true.  And  it 
is  for  this  the  state  would  remain;  but  it  would 
cease  to  be  political  in  the  present  sense  of  that 
word,  and  its  headship  would  rest  with  the  men 
of  the  largest  intellectual  and  spiritual  compe- 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OP   DEMOCEACY  91 

tency — men  who  would  be,  like  Moses,  at  once 
envisioned  prophets  and  keen  practical  adminis- 
trators. 


against  this  possible  and  importunate 
democracy,  in  red  battle-lines  arrayed,  is 
the  Bolshevist  revolution,  proposing  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  capitalist  society  and  the  erection  in 
its  stead  of  a  proletarian  dictatorship. 

Tactically,  Bolshevism  is  an  inversion  of  Prus- 
sianism.  It  proposes,  as  Prussianism  does,  to 
impose  its  order  and  culture  upon  the  world  by 
sheer  might — but  by  might  proceeding  from  the 
bottom  instead  of  from  the  top. 

Nor  is  the  tactic  of  Bolshevism  only  superfici- 
ally Prussian:  its  practical  procedure,  as  now 
manifested,  starts  from  the  very  soul  of  Prussia. 
Bolshevism  is  a  demonstration  of  Hegelianism: 
it  is  logical  Marxism:  it  is  amplified  militarism: 
it  is  the  apotheosis  of  materialism.  And  thus  is 
it  the  opposite  pole  of  democracy:  thus  is  it  the 
antithesis  of  essential  socialism. 

Moreover,  just  as  a  truly  democratic  or  a  truly 
socialist  society  would  be  the  living  body  of  the 

92 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCRACY  93 

Christ-spirit,  with  each  of  its  members  infinitely 
enabled  and  free,  so  an  effectuated  Bolshevist 
society,  if  patterned  upon  its  present  program 
of  procedure,  would  be  the  embodiment  of  the 
anti-Christ  spirit,  with  each  of  its  members  in- 
finitely and  deathfully  enslaved. 

If  the  apocalyptic  idea  of  the  Antichrist,  or  of 
Satan  appearing  as  an  angel  of  light,  were  ful- 
filled, it  would  be  something  like  this :  Satan  would 
seize  upon  some  great  general  yearning  for  social 
deliverance,  some  great  messianic  impulse  mak- 
ing for  a  new  and  heavenlier  society — a  yearning 
and  an  impulse  that,  gathering  into  round  revolt, 
were  about  to  sweep  the  world — and  he  would 
diabolize  this  revolt  with  a  false  force,  a  false 
promise,  a  false  glory,  making  it  appear  indeed 
messianic  to  the  world's  despairing  disinherited. 
And  indeed  this  is  precisely  what  Satan — using 
the  word  accommodatively — has  done  by  creating 
the  Bolshevist  peril  and  despotism  out  of  the 
yearning,  elementarily  righteous  and  social,  of  a 
great  people.  The  allurement  and  menace  of 
Bolshevism  lie  in  the  very  facf  that  it  springs 
from  an  impulse  primarily  just — even  Christian. 


94  THE   GREATER   WAR 

The  protest  of  the  enslaved  and  slain  peoples  is 
none  other  than  the  protest  of  the  Slain  Lamb  of 
the  Apocalypse.  And  it  is  the  Bolshevist's  seiz- 
ure and  perversion  of  this  primarily  divine  pro- 
test that  gives  unto  Bolshevism  its  Antichrist 
character. 

And  that  the  poor  and  the  powerless,  that  those 
who  produce  all  and  have  nothing,  should  at  last 
turn  to  sheer  economic  and  military  might  as  their 
only  way  and  weapon  of  liberation, — this  merely 
demonstrates  that  they  have  accepted  the  degra- 
dation of  the  rich.  The  meek  have  been  deceived 
and  betrayed  by  the  methods  of  the  mighty. 

Indeed,  it  is  the  mighty  who  have  loosed  the 
Bolshevist  tide  upon  the  world,  in  order  to  ride  it 
to  their  own  ends.  It  was  Germany,  first,  that 
commissioned  and  anointed  Bolshevism  for  the 
destruction  of  the  nations,  plotting  the  establish- 
ment of  a  German  world  upon  the  ruins  which  the 
Bolshevist  had  wrought.  It  has  always  been  the 
method  of  Germanism  to  undermine  the  world's 
moral  and  social  foundations,  in  order  to  make 
way  for  a  German  foundation  and  superstruc- 
ture instead.  And  Bolshevism  follows  the  same 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCRACY  95 

method,  seeking  first  the  destruction  of  the  capi- 
talist world,  then  of  the  democratic  hope,  in  order 
thence  to  lay  Bolshevist  foundations  whereon  to 
build  a  Bolshevist  world-structure. 

Then,  secondly,  it  is  the  long  delay  on  the  part 
of  the  Peace  Conference,  the  lack  of  any  definite 
policy  toward  Russia,  combined  with  the  secret 
intrigues  carried  on  by  financiers  and  nursery 
diplomats,  that  opened  the  gates  for  the  Bolshev- 
ist propaganda  throughout  the  world. 

Nor  can  the  Bolshevist  program  of  destruction 
be  met  by  destruction — it  is  never  by  mere  de- 
struction that  destruction  is  destroyed.  We  can 
only  meet  the  Bolshevist  menace  by  immediate 
and  constructive  democracy.  It  is  only  by  a 
democratic  organization  of  life  and  labor  of  man, 
of  the  totality  of  social  power  and  control,  that 
the  Bolshevist  destruction  of  civilisation  can  be 
transmuted  or  dissolved.  Only  an  understanding 
democracy  can  cope  with  and  conquer  the  Bol- 
shevist revolution  and  fulfil  the  promise,  the  right- 
eous yearning,  which  Bolshevist  leadership  has 
seized  and  betrayed. 

Nor  must  we  imagine  that  the  military  over- 


96  THE   GREATER   WAR 

throw  of  the  Soviet  Government  of  Enssia  will 
arrest  the  forces  making  for  the  Bolshevist  revo- 
lution. The  capture  of  Moscow  and  Petrograd  by 
the  army  of  Koltchak  will  accomplish  no  more 
than  a  scattering  of  the  Soviet  seed  abroad.  The 
Bolshevist  idea  is  traversing  and  permeating  the 
tribes  and  the  nations. 


XI 

TJENCE  the  crisis  of  the  world  is  once  more 
at  hand.  Again  are  we  standing  at  the  cross- 
roads of  our  planetary  destiny.  Soon,  mayhap  all 
too  soon,  will  it  be  seen  whether  our  human  pil- 
grimage shall  start  decisively  upward,  or  betake 
itself  down  a  long  and  steep  decline.  It  is  be- 
tween a  total  democratic  reconstruction  and  an 
utter  Bolshevist  destruction  that  the  nations  must 
now  make  decision.  They  must  decide  quickly, 
too;  for  to  delay  and  to  doubt  is  to  decide  for 
destruction,  whether  they  will  or  no. 

Will  you,  therefore, — you  who  claim  to  be  the 
democratic  peoples, — will  you  at  last  keep  faith 
with  your  ancient  promise,  so  long  unfulfilled? 
Will  you  now,  first  ascending  anew  and  forever 
unto  your  ideal,  and  then  through  the  sacramental 
use  of  earth's  natural  resources  and  social  ma- 
chines, through  the  conversion  and  consecration 
of  production  and  distribution,  begin  now  the 
creation  of  a  world-order  wherein  men  shall  in 

97 


98  THE   GEEATEE   WAB 

truth  be  equally  free,  equally  advantaged,  and 
every  child  heir  of  life's  total  opportunity! 

Nor  think  it  is  merely  the  Bolshevist  who  chal- 
lenges our  democracy.  It  is  the  very  challenge 
of  God  that  calls  from  the  midst  of  the  Bolshevist 
advance.  The  Bolshevist  movement  is  but  the 
rude  and  red  John  Baptist,  crying  to  our  democ- 
racy out  of  the  wilderness  the  war  has  wrought. 
"Kepent  ye  or  perish!" — this  is  the  menace  and 
message  of  Bolshevism  to  the  nations  which,  call- 
ing themselves  democratic  and  Christian,  yet  help- 
lessly halt  in  this  foul  and  universal  impasse  of 
stark  political  and  spiritual  incompetence. 

And  let  me  say  this:  if  there  were  no  indige- 
nous remedy  for  the  present  state  of  things ;  if  the 
individual  and  national  egoisms  and  cupidities,  if 
the  general  wickedness  and  governmental  stupid- 
ity, which  have  brought  us  to  our  present  plight 
were  immedicable;  if  there  were  no  inner  spirit 
or  native  sense  that  could  change  the  course 
which  history  has  hitherto  pursued, — then  it  were 
better  that  the  present  world  be  destroyed,  or  be 
resolved  back  into  its  primary  elements. 

This  frightful  and  fraudulent  civilisation  can- 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCBACY  99 

not  continue.  God  will  not  stand  the  sight  of  such 
a  world  any  longer.  Already  its  foundations  are 
rocking,  and  we  have  not  an  hour  to  lose,  if  we 
would  have  the  world  saved.  We  must  choose, 
and  choose  now,  to  put  the  democracy  we  profess 
into  practice,  to  render  socially  incarnate  the 
Christ  we  call  Lord,  or  we  must  expect  the  visita- 
tion of  that  consuming  fire  which  the  apostle  in- 
scribed as  the  "wrath  of  the  Lamb" — the  wrath 
of  a  Divine  Love  so  outraged  by  the  horror  and 
meanness  of  things  that  it  will  endure  them  no 
further.  And  this  wrath  of  the  Lamb,  this  intoler- 
ably outraged  Divine  Love,  if  so  it  be  loosed  upon 
the  earth,  will  leave  no  stone  upon  another  of  our 
unclean  and  blood-guilty  civilisation.  And  may- 
hap not  for  a  generation,  not  for  a  hundred  years, 
shall  be  born  a  mankind  equal  to  that  cleaner 
and  kindlier  civilisation,  that  manful  and  songful 
society, — certain  one  day  to  arise  upon  earth, — 
which  St.  John  saw  as  the  New  Jerusalem  coming 
down  out  of  heaven,  and  wherein  our  renascent 
human  life,  our  total  planetary  activity,  proceeds 
radiantly  and  commonly  in  the  bosom  of  God. 


XII 

T  TPON  you  young  men  of  this  ancient  and 
honored  university,  upon  the  youth  of  this 
Switzerland  wherein  democracy  has  made  its 
nearest  approach  to  realisation,  I  would  lay  the 
burden  of  the  world-crisis,  and  also  the  vision 
of  the  City  of  God. 

For  it  may  be  that  those  whom  we  call  the 
great  democratic  peoples  shall  hesitate  until  the 
choice  is  gone  by  forever;  that  the  wrath  of  the 
Lamb  must  needs  consume  this  vindictive  and 
parasitic  society,  with  its  hopelessly  corrupted 
and  corrupting  institutions,  ere  the  new  world 
can  come  into  being.  And  it  may  be  that  this 
Switzerland  shall  arise  as  the  one  green  island 
of  hope  amidst  a  world  rendered  utterly  deso- 
late, ere  the  abomination  of  abominations  be 
swept  away. 

But  even  if  mankind  erstwhile  deeply  sinks 
into  tremendous  and  appalling  night,  even  if  the 
world  become  awhile  a  jungle, — the  prowling 

100 


JUDGMENT   DAY   OF   DEMOCEACY  101 

place  of  spiritual  and  physical  terrors  unimagin- 
able,— the  World-Keeper  will  walk  therein,  ever 
redemptive  and  ever-creative;  and  therein  you 
may  walk  with  him, — and  work  with  him, — until 
the  dreadful  night  dissolve  in  the  dawn  of  the 
nobler  society. 

So  upon  you  may  come  such  a  burden  of 
opportunity  and  vision,  such  an  ineffable  affair 
of  the  world,  as  perhaps  never  came  to  the  youth 
of  any  time  or  clime.  The  bearing  of  this  burden, 
your  responsibility  to  this  vision,  will  compel  you 
to  an  adventure,  to  a  holy  quest,  such  as  man  hath 
never  entered  upon.  And  thereupon  entering, 
you  will  become  the  fortunate  soldiers — goldenly 
fortunate,  no  matter  what  price  you  have  to 
pay — of  what  is  perhaps  mankind's  final  chance, 
and  only  a  fighting  chance  at  that,  of  at  last 
becoming  commonly  adequate  and  divinely  free. 
Yea,  more  than  that,  you  share  in  God's  fighting 
chance — for  mayhap  it  is  only  a  fighting  chance 
God  has — of  unfolding  a  creation  which  shall  be 
as  the  land,  the  fulfilled  desire,  of  his  infinitely 
human  heart. 


January  1.7,   1S14«  /IleraM,- 

THE  DEATH  of  MRS.  HERKON: 


Sol  chi  uon  lascia  eredita  d'aifetti 
Poca  gioia  ha  iiell'urna — 

We  regret  to  announce  the  death 
of  Mrs.  Carrie  Rand  Herron.  wife 
of  Prof.  George  D.  Herron.  the  emi- 
nent American  sociologist  and  poet. 

Some  years  ago,  leaving  the  United 
States,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Herron  settled 
in  Florence  in  their  beautiful  man- 
sion, Villa  Primola,  once  the  histor- 
ical abode  of  Benivieni,  the  poet 
friend  of  Savonarola,  and  one  of  the 
most  charming  spots  on  the  lovely 
slopes  of  the  Fiesole  hills. 

To  this  artistic  milieu  and  most 
inspiring  environment  the  poet  and 
thinker  had  come  seeking  in  the 
balm  of  our  climate  benefit  for  his 
impaired  health,  and  in  this  classical 
and  picturesque  part  of  Florence  he 
had  desired  to  dedicate  himself  to- 
gether with  his  noble  minded  com- 
panion to  a  life  of  love  and  work 
blessed  with  ideal  and  spiritual  hap- 
piness. 

It  was  not  to  be.  Fate,  obscure 
and  mysterious  in  its  aims,  seemed 
to  have  enhanced  happiness  and  bliss 
for  a  few  years  only  to  render  more 
tragic  the  break  of  an  ideal  love. 

Mrs.  Carrie  Rand  Herron,  who  after 
a  painful  illness  passed  away  last 
Sunday  in  the  flower  of  her  life, 
was  a  woman  of  unusual  accomplish- 
ments and  a  musician  of  considerable 
talent,  nor  was  an  excessive  modesty 
able  to  hide  the  qualities  of  her 
gifted  mind  and  the  genuine  gold  of 


DATE  DUE 


PftlNTKO  INU.S.A. 


